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Mother1

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kenisu - #01
Well, this is it. This project has been literally years in the making, as it's been brewing in my mind since I first finished the game in 2000 (coherent scenes that I recall to this day didn't start forming until summer of 2002). At any rate, I had been putting it off and putting it off, until finally, just this last April, when I came back to this site after a long absence and discovered that Mother 3 was soon to be released. That brought back the fanboy in me, and I wasted no time in making plans for a comic series of my favorite game in the whole trilogy - Mother 1. The mysterious elements of this game, and the uncanny landscapes which remind me of my childhood, have long held me entranced. So, I present to you what has been on paper only since April, but what has been cooking up in my mind since six years earlier.
To comment on this specific page, I'd like to admit that the introductory narrative was a bad decision on my part. For future reference, the phrase "Little did they know" automatically cheese-ifies ANY piece of fiction. George and Maria needed no formal introduction - they introduce each other. I should have used a single subtitle saying "Outskirts of a rural American town, circa 1906", but I guess it's all water under the bridge now.

Other Submissions by kenisu3000

whohat - #09
Okay, so I had only been given a maximum of 16 pages to illustrate this book, and with the title page, that meant that page 15 was it. Corny lines ("they were happy; they had made a new friend") aside, it really does close things out a little too quickly to say "after Anna gave her father the medicine..." The famous author Mark Twain once said, "Don't just SAY the woman screamed: bring her out and let her scream!" This means that it's best to draw things out in the story so that it feels more natural, but here I had run out of pages, and had set up a plot exposition that was never to be shown. As a result, we never get to see Anna's father (not here, anyway; we'll see him in my comic series though).

whohat - #02
I've found that in the Mother 1/EB Zero universe, there's two types of fans: those who refer to the lead character as "Ninten", and those who call him "Ken" (after Saori Kumi's Mother novel). I'm of the former crowd, but in *this* particular instance I decided to go with "Ken", since it would be just plain weird for a bunch of kids who don't understand the game to be reading about someone whose name is strikingly close to "Nintendo". All the same, it was awfully weird for ME to write the story, since Ken is just a shortened version of my OWN name (Kenneth), which I generally don't like to be called.
But anyway, check out Page 2. Since the Paradise Line only has about what, six or seven destinations TOTAL, that's gotta be one tiny catalogue. Either that or they dedicated a whole page to each individual town.

whohat - #07
So why aren't Ninten and Lloyd all decked out in warm clothing? That's the beauty of cartoons - it doesn't have to make sense.
Page 12 has to be my absolute favorite :) It's all about the disgusting sneezing. Of course, I was pulling a wink at the game again, where you have to be careful who you talk to in Snowman, or they just might cough all over you and give you a cold. So originally I was going to make it a cough, but I decided sneezing would be infinitely funnier.

whohat - #08
I knew I was approaching the end of the book, and I was a little behind on schedule, so I wanted to rush things a bit. Instead of the pair walking all the way deeper into Snowman to get to the church where Anna resides with her father (where I was playing with the idea of having Anna heal Lloyd using her psychic powers, but I decided against that since some of the parents of the children coloring this book might be the paranoid "witch-hunter" type), I put Anna right there in town at the store, having conveniently just bought some medicine herself. And she gives some to Lloyd, who then, simply put, feels better. I know that's a laughably bad cop-out from having to say "two weeks and several periodic doses later he felt better", but that's just how I do things.
On another note, I was so proud of myself for the way I drew Anna's face on Page 13, because it was so professional-looking and just so... symmetrical! but when I inked it in using my big oaf pen, since she's standing in the distance and the lines on her face are smaller, the overuse of ink kinda messed it up. I've since learned to use smaller-tipped pens for inking.

whohat - #03
I love putting little nuances and inside jokes into my art. Here, on page 3, the bench the two boys are sitting on has an advertisement for Mach Pizza ("We deliver, and that's all!"). Of course, if you want to nitpick, that's a reference to Mother 2, but... hey, Mother is Mother.
Also, notice how quick Ke- err, Ninten is to agree to go to Snowman. I bet he's a good little boy who helps old ladies like her across the street. He's really got that "stand-up leadership" thing going for him.